God at the Butt End

My gtalk messages have never been more popular! Thanks to the wisdom of Lavi.

“It is easier to be God – u only have to help those who help themselves.”

An improved, rather next version of this reasoning –

“It is easiest to be God – u only have to wait for people to help themselves and take credit for it.”

Timepass Analogy

Some analogies can suck (like themes in chic flicks) and so does this one –

Finding a job is like try to find the perfect relationship – u look for a long term commitment, a company u can admire, one that shares ur philosophy, respects u and so on. But throw those expectations out and there r a million jobs that u can enjoy!

Of course,  if it’s ur baby venture, u can’t do that. But that is again about finding ur perfect love, if one exists.

Nice Intro To Carnatic Classical

After a very long break, my renewed interest in carnatic is rewarded by the plentiful resources I found on the web.

I especially like Dr. Shivkumar Kalyanaraman’s site where he’s put up an extensive archive of lessons all the way from the basics to advanced lessons. The lessons are very detailed, explaining the minutae in great depth. It is practically impossible to graduate beyond some levels without sufficient practice and mastery of these details. You will also find an archive of the ‘swaras’ along with explanation of the lyrics – again a great contribution.

Those who take classical music to be alien to their tastes should listen to the 4 part gentle introduction audio primer. It presents the basics of carnatic, contrasts it with western music and can be a good starting point to understanding this great tradition. Just download the audio files onto ur mp3 player. It is totally worth trying them out.

Telugu Keyboard Maps

Telugu keyboard maps have finally made it into the multilingualization package (m17n-contrib)!

Security: Probs & Sols are nightmares?

I recently read a paper on Morris Worm which discusses at length, the events following the infestation. According to the authors, one of the important lessons to take back from the event was that security failure at the application level should not force one to push extra stuff into the network layer. One should safe guard the home, not check every car at the highway exit

This got me to thinking about physical security. We almost always seem to employ the highway checking method. Mumbai police seem to have come up with another such ludicrous idea.